NEGA'tIT/I'fY OF ANAkCHISM rather than defined; that it gives shared meaning to deepfelt longings; that it indicates an ideal aim for which a social movement, of everyday human beings who in practice will often enough contradict their ideals, is called forth; that it expresses an «ought» that is an anticipation of its object of striving; that it serves as object of faith, as ground of solidarity and mutual aid; that it has been enriched but not transformed essentially by supporting speculations and reasoned argument; and that it has remained continuously and Intensely in touch with its originating ideals. By no means does this anarchism signify mindlessness, irrationalism or an anti-intellectual attitude -a misinterpretation common in the youth-radical movements of the 1960's, possibly reflecting confusion between (in my terminology) ideas and ideology. On the contrary, self-education, thinking through and discussing exhaustively the meaning and consequences of one's basic beliefs, being their master and not their servant, these are implicit in «the anarchist Idea, and were the norm, and frequently the practice, of traditional anarchist movements. To say that this Idea is a thought seeking its realization ls to say that It demands a maximum of social Inventiveness and practical imagination, that it demands (again) that one know what one wants. It ls opposite to obedience to ideas abstracted from life and to action uninformed by thought. This, rather than the anarchism of one or another «theorist,• ls the anarchism whose meaning I shall try to bring forth. The fact that the anarchism in question remained essentially an Idea grounded In feeling does not mean that this Idea has no history or evolution, but I shall not attempt to deal with that evolution here. Anarchism WITH the foregoing formal conception of anarchism in mind, I now offer a statement of its content. The theme of political sovereignty will be the point of departure, with proviso that we adopt the wide sense of 'politics' employed by contemporary feminists who by speaking of sexual politics have drawn notice to a veritable host of politics. («The term 'politics' shall refer to power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons ls controlled by another. By way of parenthesis one might add that 29
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